Are you a member of a Sailing Club......... and why?

I am a member of two clubs, one has a clubhouse and moorings in Portsmouth Harbour. I enjoy the sense of comunite and always get involved with the working parties and lift in/out weekends.

The second club (mentioned in my signature below) is based in land and has no clubhouse, we use the local Royal British Legion. During the winter we have monthly guest speakers (next month we have Jimmy Cornell coming!) and during the summer we have 3or 4 rallies, the last one in September saw 14 boats and 40 of us in the Folly. We are struggling to maintain membership numbers, particularly younger boat ownres because they are just thin on the ground.

I maintain the membership of both clubs beci enjoy the time spent with people who have become friends through a shared interest.
 
I'm relatively new to sailing, and assumed (rather naively) that all sailing clubs were too posh for the likes of me, requiring proposing, seconding, hefty fees etc etc. However, after buying a boat this time last year & searching for somewhere to keep it I stumbled across the club I subsequently joined. The motivation was simple - the membership fee was worth a punt on getting a (very good value) mooring.

I got the mooring, but the other benefits of joining far exceed that. I've met lots of very accomplished sailors and had the opportunity to sail with them cruising, racing round the cans and passage racing. I've learned far more from this than the RYA courses I'd hitherto completed. The club also has active youth and dinghy sections, & runs races for 9 months of the year. The social side is also good, although living an hour's drive away means I rarely get to fully enjoy it!

From what I can gather my club suffers from an aging & declining membership which seems typical. It's a great shame as clubs (in all sports) are how new talent is spotted and nurtured. The self help ethos of my club certainly helps to make owning & running a boat attainable. Personally I'm happy to contribute by crewing on the safety / committee boat or helping out at the odd event.

Joining a club was the best decision I made re sailing, & I'd say that you get out what you put in.
 
RupertW said:
Very few answers from those who sail but would run a mile from a sailing club in theory, and have that confirmed in practice when every they are tempted.

Some people, like me, don't join things and find that meeting two members of any kind of club makes your skin crawl. Often nice individuals but if you go sailing partly to be away from all rules and petty politics then the mention of maintenance duty or committee membership or a regular commitment to some sailing activity is horrible. If only there could be self service membership where for a premium fee you could get out of everything except sailing your boat.
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You’re not describing sailing clubs, Rupert: you’re describing the wrong sort of sailing club for you. There are plenty of clubs that offer the facilities you want, and a great community and opportunity to sail or just chat on the pontoons with people you feel something in common with, but don’t badger you to race or cruise together or do race duties. At mine, I do, but not as much as the enthusiasts with more time or less family life on their hands (and more than many) - but there’s no feeling of coercion or expectation that comes with membership.
 
BelleSerene said:
You’re not describing sailing clubs, Rupert: you’re describing the wrong sort of sailing club for you. There are plenty of clubs that offer the facilities you want, and a great community and opportunity to sail or just chat on the pontoons with people you feel something in common with, but don’t badger you to race or cruise together or do race duties.
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I think there are fundamentally two sorts of organisations; sailing clubs and clubs for people who sail. In other words, some clubs exist in order to make it possible for their members to sail (gliding clubs are like this, too) while some are basically social clubs for people who like sailing but whose degree of involvement in sailing is not materially affected by being a member of the club. As a rough-and-ready rule of thumb, these latter are more likely to be yacht clubs, though not all yacht clubs are like this.
 
BelleSerene said:
You’re not describing sailing clubs, Rupert: you’re describing the wrong sort of sailing club for you. There are plenty of clubs that offer the facilities you want, and a great community and opportunity to sail or just chat on the pontoons with people you feel something in common with, but don’t badger you to race or cruise together or do race duties. At mine, I do, but not as much as the enthusiasts with more time or less family life on their hands (and more than many) - but there’s no feeling of coercion or expectation that comes with membership.
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I hope you are right - I enjoy being a member of the CA because it's local yet so virtual that I can meet or chat with whichever ever sub group makes sense at the time. But the real physical local club starts every membership conversation by shoving a clipboard of tasks at me then making it very clear that if I'm hoping for a mooring then I'm essentially taking the mick.
 
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RupertW said:
I hope you are right - I enjoy being a member of the CA because it's local yet so virtual that I can meet or chat with whichever ever sub group makes sense at the time. But the real physical local club starts every membership conversation by shoving a clipboard of tasks at me then making it very clear that if I'm hoping for a mooring then I'm essentially taking the mick.
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'Mmyes. All those clubs which say "You've got to prove your commitment to the club so we know you're not just after a mooring" when we all know that 95% of their members with moorings would resign if they lost their space. What they really mean is "Without mooringless members to do all the work in an effort to prove their worth, we'd have to pay a realistic price for our hobby."
 
The growth of the modern marina has probably taken a big swipe at the membership of yacht clubs. All the marinas at which we have been long term residents have had a good social life and at least one of them has had organised sailing activities including races. If I am going to pay a significant number of thousands of pounds each year for a space on a pontoon and we have a reasonable number of neighbours that we get on well with, why am I going to pay another £600 per year to be a member of a club? We organise pontoon parties and evening get-togethers on each other's boats, the marina has a reasonable bar - what purpose does the yacht club serve?
 
RupertW said:
I hope you are right - I enjoy being a member of the CA because it's local yet so virtual that I can meet or chat with whichever ever sub group makes sense at the time. But the real physical local club starts every membership conversation by shoving a clipboard of tasks at me then making it very clear that if I'm hoping for a mooring then I'm essentially taking the mick.
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I assume that membership of that club is relatively cheap? The club that we were members of charged many hundreds of pounds each year, but employed professionals to do everything - in the three years that we were members, all we ever did was to prop up the bar. I have come across clubs that expect members to do all the maintenance and management tasks, but they typically have far lower membership fees.
 
maby said:
I assume that membership of that club is relatively cheap? The club that we were members of charged many hundreds of pounds each year, but employed professionals to do everything - in the three years that we were members, all we ever did was to prop up the bar. I have come across clubs that expect members to do all the maintenance and management tasks, but they typically have far lower membership fees.
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It's low hundreds a year and I get the communal effort bit although I'd rather pay to avoid it, but it's the attitude as explained above of old members having status and moorings whilst new members have to prove themselves worthy for an unspecified time in hope of being able to move their boats to a club mooring. No fun being a fee paying supplicant.
 
JumbleDuck said:
I think there are fundamentally two sorts of organisations; sailing clubs and clubs for people who sail. In other words, some clubs exist in order to make it possible for their members to sail (gliding clubs are like this, too) while some are basically social clubs for people who like sailing but whose degree of involvement in sailing is not materially affected by being a member of the club. As a rough-and-ready rule of thumb, these latter are more likely to be yacht clubs, though not all yacht clubs are like this.
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From my recent experience I would add a third type: social clubs that have sailing (or in this case Yachting) in the name but who are so desperate for members under the age of seventy that no connection with sailing is likely, willingness to stump up the fee and a slight sense of desperation for friends being the only qualification.
 
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We’re family members of an East coast club, and are among the youngest boat owning members at a shade under 40.

We live a 45 minute drive away if the traffic behaves. I’ve met lots of nice people and the club has excellent facilities. There is however a lot of volunteering and I’ve been roped into it alongside some other friends.

We have a young family, both commute to London for work, and just about have time to look after our boat.

Some days when yet another email arrives asking me to do something for the club I just want to say feck it and stump up more than double the money for a marina berth instead. I come from a sailing family and grew up in yacht clubs. I have no idea how a newcomer to the sport / hobby would cope with this kind of yacht club model.

Every generation has less free time as we get more and more squeezed economically, and I can’t see how clubs that persist with the volunteering model are ever going to attract substantial numbers of younger members.

I fear the aging yacht club comprised mostly of retirees is here to stay unless we have a major societal change which gives people a better ratio of free time to income.
 
mrming said:
We’re family members of an East coast club, and are among the youngest boat owning members at a shade under 40.

We live a 45 minute drive away if the traffic behaves. I’ve met lots of nice people and the club has excellent facilities. There is however a lot of volunteering and I’ve been roped into it alongside some other friends.

We have a young family, both commute to London for work, and just about have time to look after our boat.

Some days when yet another email arrives asking me to do something for the club I just want to say feck it and stump up more than double the money for a marina berth instead. I come from a sailing family and grew up in yacht clubs. I have no idea how a newcomer to the sport / hobby would cope with this kind of yacht club model.

Every generation has less free time as we get more and more squeezed economically, and I can’t see how clubs that persist with the volunteering model are ever going to attract substantial numbers of younger members.

I fear the aging yacht club comprised mostly of retirees is here to stay unless we have a major societal change which gives people a better ratio of free time to income.
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I think you have hit the nail on the head. we were 41 and 46 when we joined our club, both work full time, children aged 5 and 7 at the time and barely have the time to sail, let alone maintain the boat. The thought of saving a couple of hundred pounds but having to spend a day or two working around the club is a non starter.

Clubs need to recognise that many more people now are time poor but cash rich ( well until they bought a boat) and that a model that expects new young members to give up 1 or 2 days to not sail is not appealing. They will work for those who are perhaps single / childless, live close etc and can see it working for many dinghy clubs but flexibility is key.
 
Elecglitch said:
From my recent experience I would add a third type: social clubs that have sailing (or in this case Yachting) in the name but who are so desperate for members under the age of seventy that no connection with sailing is likely, willingness to stump up the fee and a slight sense of desperation for friends being the only qualification.
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Good point.
 
mrming said:
I fear the aging yacht club comprised mostly of retirees is here to stay unless we have a major societal change which gives people a better ratio of free time to income.
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It's not just amount of time, it's what you do with it. I suspect that people today are generally less enamoured of doing heavy labouring when they would rather be sailing.
 
I feel very strongly that some people here ought to research their local club options a bit more thoroughly.

Our volunteer only club ( well we do have paid cleaners midweek ) asks us all to do duties, but they are in various categories so as a mainly cruiser sailor I choose to work in the winter, painting the very good clubhouse interior, mooring surveys and upgrades, mowing grass in the Spring, that sort of thing; as I have pointed out to the usually inexperienced dinghy people I'm not keen to sit waving flags about for a couple of hours in a safety boat or killing people with my cooking in the galley as a couple of hours for them means an entire weekend cruising lost, and they get this.

No Way do new members get used as slave labour to maintain moorings for the established crusties like me !

Newcomers cannot be absolutely guaranteed a mooring, perhaps this is a bit of a tradition more than anything else - as I've NEVER known someone joining not to get a mooring, and I've introduced quite a lot of people who are members now including quite a few from here.

At our AGM last week it was said we are doing well as a club but there are still some moorings spare thanks to the efforts of our volunteer mooring team resurrecting old spots and maintaining the lot.

We also have a thriving Junior section and informal dinghy cruises as well as the racing with tuition if required, other options include proper First Aid, Powerboat, VHF and Dinghy courses subject to demand as well as occasional live music and social events, cruiser rallies etc.

So if people want sheltered half tide soft mud moorings in Chichester or Langstone harbours, excellent facilities inc boat hoist, clubhouse, winter ashore, locked tender pens and car parking - all for low fees but must do their turn on quite fun duties as I described - among friendly people of all grades of experience and profession, all willing to help each other when relevant, PM me.
 
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